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New York Times article about endocrine disruptors
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4/12/2015 Warnings From a Flabby Mouse The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/kristofwarningsfromaflabbymouse.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholaskristof 1/4
http://nyti.ms/UWMYP9
SundayReview | OPED COLUMNIST
Warnings From a Flabby Mouse
Nicholas Kristof JAN. 19, 2013
JAN. 19, 2013
Nicholas Kristof
ONE of the puzzles of the modern world is why we humans are growing sotubby. Maybe these two mice offer a clue.
They’re genetically the same, raised in the same lab and given the samefood and chance to exercise. Yet the bottom one is svelte, while the other lookslike, well, an American.
The only difference is that the top one was exposed at birth to just onepart per billion of an endocrinedisrupting chemical. The brief exposureprogrammed the mouse to put on fat, and although there were no significantdifferences in caloric intake or expenditure, it continued to put on flab longafter the chemical was gone.
4/12/2015 Warnings From a Flabby Mouse The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/kristofwarningsfromaflabbymouse.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholaskristof 2/4
That experiment is one of a growing number of peerreviewed scientificstudies suggesting that one factor in the industrialized world’s obesityepidemic (along with Twinkies, soda and television) may be endocrinedisrupting chemicals. These chemicals are largely unregulated — they are infood, couches, machine receipts and shampoos — and a raft of new studiessuggest that they can lead to the formation of more and larger fat cells.
Before I describe some of this research, a more basic issue: Why should anoped columnist write about scholarship published in scientific journals? Don’tpundits have better things to fret about, like the feuding between Democratsand Republicans?
One answer is that obesity is an important national problem, partlyresponsible for soaring health care costs. Yet the chemical lobby, just like thetobacco industry before it, has impeded serious regulation and is even tryingto block research.
A second is that journalists historically have done a poor job coveringpublic health issues — we were slow on the dangers of tobacco and painfullydelinquent in calling attention to the perils of lead — but these are central toour national wellbeing. Our lives are threatened less by the Taliban inAfghanistan than by unregulated contaminants at home.
Endocrine disruptors are a class of chemicals that mimic hormones andtherefore confuse the body. Initially, they provoked concern because of theirlinks to cancers and the malformation of sex organs. Those concerns continue,but the newest area of research is the impact that they have on fat storage.
Bruce Blumberg, a developmental biologist at the University of California,Irvine, coined the term “obesogen” in a 2006 journal article to refer tochemicals that cause animals to store fat. Initially, this concept was highlycontroversial among obesity experts, but a growing number of peerreviewedstudies have confirmed his finding and identified some 20 substances asobesogens.
4/12/2015 Warnings From a Flabby Mouse The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/kristofwarningsfromaflabbymouse.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholaskristof 3/4
The role of these chemicals has been acknowledged by the presidentialtask force on childhood obesity, and the National Institutes of Health hasbecome a major funder of research on links between endocrine disruptors andboth obesity and diabetes.
Among chemicals identified as obesogens are materials in plastics, cannedfood, agricultural chemicals, foam cushions and jet fuel. For example, a studyin the fall found that triflumizole, a fungicide used on many food crops, likeleafy vegetables, causes obesity in mice.
Just this month, a new study in the journal Environmental HealthPerspectives found that endocrine disruptors that are sometimes added to PVCplastic cause mice to grow obese and suffer liver problems — and the effectcontinues with descendants of those mice, generation after generation.
Another study found that women with a pesticide residue in their bloodbore babies who were more likely to be overweight at the age of 14 months.
That’s a common thread: The most important time for exposure appearsto be in utero and in childhood. It’s not clear whether most obesogens will domuch to make an ordinary adult, even a pregnant woman, fatter (although onehas been shown to do so), and the greatest impact seems to be on fetuses andon children before puberty.
The magazine Scientific American recently asked whether doctors shoulddo more to warn pregnant women about certain chemicals. It cited a surveyindicating that only 19 percent of doctors cautioned pregnant women aboutpesticides, only 8 percent about BPA (an endocrine disruptor in some plasticsand receipts), and only 5 percent about phthalates (endocrine disruptorsfound in cosmetics and shampoos). Dr. Blumberg, the pioneer of the field, sayshe strongly recommends that people — especially children and women who arepregnant or may become pregnant — try to eat organic foods to reduceexposure to endocrine disruptors, and try to avoid using plastics to store foodor water. “My daughter uses a stainless steel water bottle, and so do I,” he said.
4/12/2015 Warnings From a Flabby Mouse The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/kristofwarningsfromaflabbymouse.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholaskristof 4/4
For all the uncertainty, these latest studies are one more reason to worrythat endocrine disruptors may be the tobacco of our time. Sciencebaseddecisions to improve public health — like the removal of lead from gasoline —have been among our government’s most beneficial public policy moves. Inthis case, a starting point would be to boost research of endocrine disruptorsand pass the Safe Chemicals Act. That measure, long stalled in Congress,would require more stringent safety testing of potentially toxic chemicalsaround us.
After all, which mouse would we rather look like?
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please alsojoin me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me onTwitter.
A version of this oped appears in print on January 20, 2013, on page SR11 of the New York editionwith the headline: Warnings From a Flabby Mouse.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
